This is a pre-order. Orders will ship after 3rd August 2026

143 × 165mm -- 220 pages -- paperback

“An inside take-down of the art world ... with the comic tartness and flat bright colours Haifisch uses adding a carbonated kick.” - Teddy Jamieson, The Scottish Herald

“To me, personally, Anna Haifisch is one of the greatest artists of this time we live in, right now. I love everything she makes. Her comic series, The Artist, is one of my favourite creative works ever made. I’ve read each strip dozens of times, and each panel makes me feel good. I’ve cried at how much of myself I recognise in her work. I think of specific panels and dialogue and become instantly happy.” - Nick Gazin, Vice Magazine

Breakdown Press are excited to bring Anna Haifisch’s The Artist back to print in a new omnibus edition, collecting both the original 2016 graphic novel and it’s 2019 follow-up, The Circle of Life, along with additional strips including the brand new Bird Opera. Now readers can experience the whole story in one hilarious and heart-wrenching volume, exposing the absurdity of the fine art world as experienced by a young artist. 

Anna Haifisch’s idiosyncratic, episodic comic chronicles the formative years of a young artist, satirising the exclusive, ephemeral and absurd world of fine art with all of its arcane protocols and quirks. Plagued by doubts and anxiety, the artist confronts constant setbacks and tantalizingly occasional glimpses of success.

Based on Haifisch’s own experiences as an illustrator in both Germany and the USA, The Artist is a sharp and self-deprecating comedy that will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to make art. In The Artist, Haifisch has exposed the very nerves of what it means to be an artist in a world of ever shifting rules and complications, to hilarious and insightful ends.